Having recently graduated from the Software Engineering program at the University of Waterloo, I thought that it would
be helpful to share a few of my perspectives on the program. As someone who has completed the program, hopefully I can
provide some additional information that can help you make a decision if you’re considering to apply.

Since you can already find plenty of information about application and degree requirements on the university’s website,
I’ll focus on the aspects that are not as well-covered.

This past spring I took the introductory computer graphics course (CS 488) at the University of Waterloo. The course
is part of the university’s “big three” fourth year computer science courses, which are infamous for their high
workload.

One of the really rewarding parts of the course is the final project, where you get to spend three weeks building
either an interactive OpenGL based application or a ray tracer. The details of the project are otherwise mostly open
ended. I chose to write a ray tracer, which consisted of implementing a variety of different ray tracing techniques.
You can see all of my generated images here, which is what I submitted as my final project. I’ve also
included some of them in this post.

My last post was over three years ago, and the past three years have definitely been quite a whirlwind.
Having finished my fifth internship and in a reflective mood, I thought that this would be a fitting time
to share five of the random things I’ve learned over my past five internships.

About two months ago (yeah I know, this blog post is really late) I wrote my last final exam for first year and moved back home from Waterloo. First year was definitely an interesting experience, to say the least. If I could sum it up in one word, it would be fast.

Quite a bit has changed since my last post. I’m currently a Software Engineering student at the University of Waterloo, and nearly finished first year. Things have been very hectic but I can definitely say that I’ve learned so much in these past seven months—both academically and non-academically. But I’ll save that for a future blog post.

My high school experience has been pretty interesting, to say the least. I’ve learned a lot both academically and about life in general. While I have quite a bit to say about both topics, I’m going to save my thoughts on academics for later. For this post, I thought I’d share a bit of what I’ve learned over the past few years in the form of tips.

The other day I found a 1952 penny in my mother’s change. I like to collect random coins I stumble on, so I decided to keep it. The penny actually caught my eye because it had King George VI on it (for those not familiar, the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II and her predecessor is King George VI). This wasn’t the first older penny I found, but I decided to try and determine its value. While searching, I stumbled on some interesting facts about coinage and the monarchy that I thought I’d share.

Interestingly enough, monarchs that are represented on coinage traditionally face in the opposite direction as their predecessor. If you take any coin minted by a commonwealth country that has the monarch on the back, you’ll notice that Queen Elizabeth II faces right. However coins minted during the reign of King George VI, her predecessor, have him facing left. This tradition started with King Charles II.

Clapster is an app I developed over the past two weeks to help provide a great way for music students to practice for ear tests which are required in almost all music examinations.

Clapster focuses specifically on the clapback ear test where the student has to clap back the rhythm of a short tune that is played to them. Given the fact that it isn’t easy to practice for these tests on your own, Clapster helps alleviate some of that burden by doing the testing and scoring for you.

The next few days here in Toronto are supposed to be quite hot and humid—the perfect time for a blog post about humidex.

You may or may not have heard the term “humidex” before, and if you have, you’ve probably heard about it during a weather forecast. The term itself is a portmanteau of the two words “humidity” and “index”. It is a quantitative way for Environment Canada to describe the effect of humidity on how hot a particular day will feel to a person. The number used for humidex is actually unit-less, however, you can directly equate it to a temperature in degrees Celsius that indicates how hot the day will feel. You’ll typically hear a “feels like” temperature during a weather forecast, which refers to the humidex value.

Mobile development seemed really interesting, so I decided to learn how to use the Android libraries to make my own apps.

There’s a lot of really cool things you can do with a phone app, and because of that, Android’s libraries are very expansive and rich—meaning there’s a lot to learn.

While picking up the basics behind layouts and buttons, I ended up writing a tip calculator app.

The app will calculate how much you need to tip and will also split your bill for you if you need it. If you don’t know how much to tip, the app can also help you out with that too. Very revolutionary, huh?

Today marks one hundred and forty six years since Canada first became a country.

Go out, celebrate and have fun! Today’s the day to commemorate Canada and to feel proud as a Canadian.

If you’re the outdoorsy type, Canada’s national parks and national historic sites are all free today. Last year I had a great time visiting Point Pelee National Park, which is Canada’s southernmost point.

A few weeks ago Apple revealed the newest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 7. The most notable change is the overhauled user interface, which marks the first time Apple has made a significant change to how iOS looks since it was first introduced back in ‘07.